Mechanics of Materials/Force-based Static Equilibrium/Static Form of Newton's Second Law of Motion

3.2 Static Form of Newton's Second Law of Motion Newton's Second Law of Motion relates the sum of the forces on a body with a given mass to its acceleration. In the study of statics, we simply set this acceleration to zero meaning the body does not accelerate. When thinking about bridges and buildings, this condition may seem intuitively obvious but it is still worth pointing out that we do not want these structures to move.